Athena Force: Books 1-6

by Justine Davis, Amy J. Fetzer, Katherine Garbera, Meredith Fletcher, Catherine Mann

  With an effort she set aside her irritation with her mother, something she’d learned to do very well in her life. Something else Athena had given her—the self-control to choose her battles.

  They drove back to her Alexandria home in Emerson’s large Mercedes sedan. Alex relaxed into the rich leather front seat, letting the stress she always incurred visiting her mother seep away. Emerson drove competently, conservatively, and she knew they’d arrive safely.

  When they arrived, he parked in her driveway near the steps and sidewalk to the front door. She no longer suggested he pull around back where he could park practically next to the back door. A Howland apparently never used the back door at any house he didn’t own.

  “Would you like to come in for a drink?” she asked.

  “Thank you, no, dear. I have an early surgery in the morning.”

  “You could leave from here,” she suggested. “It’s closer to the hospital.”

  He frowned. “We’ve talked about this before, Alexandra. You know how I feel.”

  All the irritation she’d fought down seemed to bubble up anew. “Don’t you have the least curiosity as to whether we’ll suit sexually?” she asked bluntly, tired of dancing around the subject with him.

  She thought she saw his jaw tighten, but his voice was perfectly calm when he said evenly, “I’m sure that won’t be a problem.”

  She thought about trying to explain to him that she’d not been asking him for sex, but only asked him to stay because she was feeling very alone just now, that she felt as if life were careening out of control and she simply wanted someone there to talk to.

  But with Emerson it smacked of begging, and she wouldn’t stoop that low. She hid her tangled emotions behind a mask of mockery.

  “A less confident woman rejected like that might question her own appeal.”

  “It has nothing to do with your appeal, Alexandra. You’re a lovely woman, as I’m sure you know. But I’m hardly a boy who can’t control his sexual appetite.”

  As if to prove his own words, he leaned forward and kissed her. It was a cool, gentle kiss, pleasant and affectionate but hardly full of passion. Alex kissed him back, rather fiercely, determined to see if she could wrest some sign out of him that this wasn’t as easy as it seemed to be for him.

  And then he straightened, smiled at her as if he’d noticed nothing out of the ordinary, said good-night and walked down the steps and to his car. He gave her a casual wave as he drove away. Only then did she admit she’d been trying to fire, in at least one of them, the same kind of passion that flowed in her each time she saw Justin Cohen.

  Out of everything he’d said, one word echoed in her mind after he’d gone.

  Control.

  If she had to describe Emerson in one word, she supposed that would be it. Now she wondered if he might consider her, as his wife, one more thing to control. The night he’d suggested she would have to leave her job if she had children came back to her now, vividly and painfully.

  She went to bed alone and lay awake long into the night. When she did sleep, she dreamed of times long past, of days spent at Athena, riding the trails in the mountains, watching the sunrise paint the world impossible shades of pink and orange and blue, feeling the cold desert quickly warming to the sun once more. Of Rainy, laughing, alive and proud of the group of women she’d single-handedly pulled together into the best team Athena had ever seen.

  And she dreamed of children, all with Rainy’s beauty and charm, her brilliance and her grace, helpless and lost out there in a heartless world that could conceive of such an evil plan, never knowing the joyous, wondrous person who had provided the basis for their lives.

  And of Justin Cohen, wildly beautiful and passionately determined in his hunt for the truth.

  She woke abruptly, and the remembered image was immediately replaced with a new one, the still charismatic, still passionate man the boy had become.

  In those dark hours, she felt a kinship with him. She’d been girlishly awed by him then. She thought she understood him now. Because she, and the others, were in the same boat he’d been sailing alone for so long.

  She tried to put him out of her mind, but he didn’t want to go. He lingered, taunting her, reminding her of old imaginings long forgotten. She tried to think of something else. Wisps of her earlier dreams floated to the surface, visions of the children she had seen in that lost world. Rainy’s children. Children Rainy had never known about. Children who had never known her.

  Children, she thought as the mists of sleep gradually cleared, who might or might not exist.

  Only then, as she came more awake, did a stunning thought hit her. All this time she’d been thinking of Rainy’s babies, helpless babies, stolen from their mother before they were even conceived, implanted in a stranger, like Kelly Cohen, to then be given to some other stranger.

  It hadn’t occurred to her yet, the logical conclusion if the same thing had been done to her.

  She could have children of her own out there.

  She abruptly sat up. It was simply too much to get her mind around, at least right now. And, she told herself sternly, there was no point wasting energy on it when she didn’t know yet if she’d been victimized in the same manner Rainy had been.

  But her babies, out there, lost, alone…

  And then, as her mind came fully out of the fog of those dreams, she got her second shock. She realized the true math. That if Rainy’s eggs truly had been used for an in vitro process, and if it had been done at the time of harvesting, any child immediately implanted in a surrogate would be over twenty years old now. Rainy’s child—or perhaps more than one—would be barely younger than Alex herself.

  It made the search more crucial, somehow. It seemed even more important that they find out, so if there was a child, it didn’t have to go another day without knowing about its true mother.

  So she could only hope that, unlike Justin, it didn’t take the Cassandras nearly twenty years to get to the bottom of their mystery.

  For the first time since she’d been given her FBI badge and been sworn in as an agent, Alex hated her work. It took every bit of her considerable discipline to force herself to focus on the cases that she’d been handed two minutes after she’d walked in the door. A murder from Chicago, the latest in a string of killings from Atlanta, a kidnapping in Florida and a possible terrorist weapons cache in San Francisco. Her boss had made it clear they all had priority, and the load had kept her running all day long.

  Each case deserves my best, she told herself sternly, trying to make herself concentrate. Her co-workers were no help, albeit with the best of intentions. Several of them, seeing she was back, stopped to express condolences, ask how she was doing and inevitably ask if there was anything they could do.

  She felt like telling them they could take all this work off her hands so she could go back and finish what she’d started, but she knew they’d already worked hard for several days to cover her absence.

  She set her jaw and began. She tackled each case methodically until she finally hit her rhythm and managed to push other thoughts out of her mind. Not that they didn’t keep trying to pop up periodically, but she had managed to armor herself against them, knowing there was nothing she could do about them right now.

  She matched the torn edge of a single piece of duct tape that had been removed from a kidnap victim’s mouth, to the end of a roll police had collected from a suspect’s garage. The DNA from the victim was already in for comparison to that found on the tape, but this would give the investigators even more evidence. When she was done she filed the transparent film that preserved the tape with the rest of the documents in the submission package from a county sheriff in Wyoming.

  She moved on to the next case, and the bit of glass removed from a hit-and-run victim’s head wound. It was tiny, so this was going to take some time, she thought, but eventually she’d know if this fragment came from the broken windshield of the suspect’s vehicle.

  By the
end of the day she had made good headway and had a feeling of satisfaction that she was holding up her end. Even her boss seemed pleased, although he couldn’t seem to resist pointing out yet again how behind they were because she’d been gone so long. Of course, part of the reason he looked pleased was because she was still at her desk, clearly working, as he left for the day.

  It was an hour or so after her boss had gone that her phone rang. She glanced at the clock, mentally crossed her fingers and reached for the receiver.

  “Forsythe.”

  “Hello, my dear.”

  The sound of her grandfather’s voice on the phone did a great deal to ease Alex’s tension. She was glad she’d waited here at work, hoping he’d call as soon as his plane from Tokyo landed at 5:45 p.m.

  “You’re back?”

  “Yes, although I’m still in New York at the moment. But your message sounded a bit…urgent. I thought I’d best call the first moment I had.”

  She’d called his voice mail that morning, indicating that she needed to talk to him, at length, alone and soon.

  “It is urgent, but it’s also not something I want to discuss over the phone.”

  “I see.” His voice told her he indeed did see, at least, the importance of the situation. “My commuter flight leaves at 7:00 p.m. I should get in by 8:15. Shall I come straight to the house?”

  She let out a sigh of relief. He would be there by nine. In less than three hours she could lighten this load by talking to the one man in the world whose opinion and intellect she respected more than any other.

  “You won’t be too tired?”

  “I actually slept rather well on the flight,” he assured her. “I’ll be fine for some time yet. So, shall I come?”

  “That would be perfect,” she said, meaning it.

  “Are you all right, Alexandra?”

  It was the concern in his voice as much as his unusual use of her full name that told her he’d read the tone of her voice quite well.

  “For the moment, yes,” she said. “Now that I know you’re on your way.”

  “I’ll see you in a few hours, then.” He paused, and then added softly, “Take care, Alex.”

  “I will, G.C. Drive carefully. I love you.”

  “And I you, my dear. More than I think you know.”

  She hung up, wondering why she’d felt compelled to tell him she loved him. It wasn’t something they bandied about—Forsythes were not extravagantly demonstrative—but just now she’d been unable to resist the need to tell him what he meant to her. That he had returned the sentiment so feelingly told her he understood, and not for the first time she was very, very thankful she had him in her life.

  Since she knew if she left now she’d only end up pacing the floor at home, she took the chance to do a bit more work. She set up everything she had to do tomorrow, so that when she came in she could go right to work. Finally at 7:30 p.m. she wrapped up, secured her desk and her lab station, logged the evidence, placed it into the security lockers and signed out.

  At this hour the traffic on I-95 had eased somewhat, and she guessed barring any tie-ups, she would make it home in less than an hour.

  When she arrived, she thought, she would turn on the exterior light over the back door for her grandfather. Unlike Emerson, Charles Forsythe had no problem with where he entered any house, as long as he was welcome. Then she’d put a kettle of water on the stove, because he’d probably prefer tea to coffee.

  Or maybe, she thought with a sigh, she’d just go straight for the bourbon. That alone would warn him how serious what she had to tell him was.

  She blinked several times to clear an odd bleariness that seemed to have affected her vision. She slowed and changed to the right-hand lane until it cleared.

  She felt an odd wave of heat go through her. It was followed by a remarkable sensation of every last ounce of energy draining away from her. She wondered if the change of climate had had some odd effect. She should turn the air on after all, she thought, but somehow the knob was just too far away. Her arms were too heavy to lift. Too heavy to even move. Her legs wouldn’t move, either, not even to hit the brakes, which she had a vague idea she should.

  She’d never in her life been so tired. Nor had exhaustion ever hit her so suddenly. The last thing she remembered thinking was that it was odd that the car wouldn’t stay between the lines. And then she couldn’t even see the lines.

  When the crash came, it seemed a far off, distant thing.

  Chapter 19

  “Let me by, that’s my granddaughter!”

  Alex heard G.C.’s voice long before she saw him. She also heard the sergeant who had been taking her information hurriedly tell the young officer who was trying to keep onlookers away to let Mr. Forsythe through. This was one of the few times in her life she was thoroughly grateful for the power the Forsythe name held in this part of the country.

  “Hey, I know that guy.” The paramedic, who was tidying up the small cut on her forehead that was the only apparent damage she’d sustained, had also glanced up at the sound of the voices. “Haven’t I seen him on TV? And maybe in the paper?”

  “Probably,” Alex agreed.

  “He’s some real bigwig, isn’t he? I think I even saw a photo of him with the president!”

  “Right now,” Alex said, “he’s just my grandfather.”

  Charles had made his way to the paramedic van and was looking at her anxiously.

  “Alex! They said you were all right,” he said, eyeing the paramedic who stood there gaping with a pair of scissors and some gauze in his hands, with something like worry mixed with anger.

  “I am,” she assured him, with a dismissive gesture at her forehead. “It’s just a little cut.”

  He turned to the young man, who seemed to be tongue-tied. Her grandfather often had this effect on people, even total strangers. Even if they hadn’t seen him on television, in the paper or with the president.

  “Is she all right?”

  “I…er…yes, sir. She will be. It bled a lot, but she doesn’t even need stitches.” He lifted the gauze and scissors. “I was just going to put something over the cut.”

  She saw Charles look over toward her car. She didn’t need to see it. As the young trooper who had first arrived at the scene had told her with a low whistle, she was lucky she’d managed to slow down before losing it altogether. As it was the car was a pretty sad sight. She had centered it on an overhanging sign pole, and had she been going faster, she could easily have ended up with the motor in her lap.

  “What about concussion?”

  Alex had already been through this with the medic, but let him answer. “We don’t think so, there are no signs. She had her seat belt on, and that saved her from anything serious. We think the cut may just be from some flying glass.”

  “I’m lucky it only hit my hard head,” Alex put in. “It could have ended up in my eye, and then I really would be hurting.”

  Her wry observation seemed to convince her grandfather she indeed was all right, because he immediately took charge and began to issue orders. Alex smothered a smile, not so much because he did it, she was used to that, but because people inevitably—and usually quickly—obeyed him without even thinking about who he was or whether or not he had any authority over them. Commanding presence again, she thought. Something some people never had to be taught, they were simply born with it. Charles Bennington Forsythe was one of those people.

  Within a short time he had arranged for her car to be towed to the garage of his choice, even though it was all the way up in D.C., had the sergeant expedite the paperwork so he could take his granddaughter home and had the young trooper so in awe that he could barely speak at all. And for once, Alex let him. She was more shaken than she wanted to admit, and was glad he was there to take over.

  It wasn’t until she was ensconced safely in the front seat of her grandfather’s big sedan that she told him what had happened.

  “It must have been stress, from all that’s been
happening lately, or maybe just serious jet lag from crisscrossing the country,” she said, “but it’s never happened to me before. Not like that.”

  “Like what?” Charles asked, driving, she noticed, with extreme care, as if he weren’t yet convinced she hadn’t been damaged in some way.

  “Like…just this enormous wave of fatigue. One minute I was fine, and the next, boom. It happened that fast, like…”

  Her voice trailed off and she gave a little one-shouldered shrug. When she tried to describe it out loud, it sounded lame.

  “Well, you’re going to stay at the farm and rest, young lady, where I can keep an eye on you. And you’ll be seeing a doctor first thing tomorrow to be certain there are no aftereffects. And I’ll brook no argument from you.”

  “Yes, sir,” Alex said meekly.

  “You’re obviously far too exhausted, for something like this to happen,” he went on tenaciously.

  “It wasn’t—what did you say? For something like this to happen? Something like what?”

  “To doze off at the wheel, of course.”

  She went very still. She hadn’t thought of it in those words.

  “That’s what they said must have happened. You obviously weren’t drunk, or under the influence of anything. Although I could have told them that without all their little breath tests.”

  Alex felt like a slow-witted fool. How could it have taken her this long to realize? She fought down a shudder that came from deep inside her.

  She’d just had an accident nearly identical to Rainy’s.

  And it was truly only luck, location and timing that had kept it from having the same fatal result.

  “My God,” she whispered.

  She’d been tired, but not that tired. Not tired enough to just doze off while driving. In fact, anticipating the upcoming meeting with G.C., she’d been awake and alert.

  And she’d never fainted in her entire life, so that was out.